Measuring and Disrupting Anti-Adblockers Using Differential Execution Analysis [pdf]
homepage.divms.uiowa.edu
homepage.divms.uiowa.edu
So its debatable even they would win the ad arms race, but they would also lose credibility in their own metrics as the easiest solution will be to start fooling ad companies that their ads are loading.
Any statistics to believe this is true? I know for a fact it's false for myself because I do sometimes click on ads when I don't block them.
Is there statistics to support this as a business decision? How effective is continued pestering a person in order to sell a product. The Sales Pitch by Philip K. Dick comes in mind.
When you are blocking ads, do you click on them? I wouldn't: I'd instead be annoyed that I'm seeing ads when I have an adblocker running.
Yeah I do, that's literally what I'm saying. I've clicked on ads that have slipped through.
This is false.
I think publishers deploying anti-adblock technology are making a similar mistake. When someone takes action not to see ads, do you really think they're going to respond well when you deploy trickery to show them ads anyway? Are they going to be especially well-disposed to your brand, or are they going to be filled with determined hatred for you? This is a losing proposition.
i highly recommend running both uMatrix and uBlock Origin. then whitelist cdns on a per-domain basis.
with the amount of tech and data available these days, google still chooses to show me an ad for chevy on an ice cream site. the fact that the ads are so obviously out of context is truly baffling - does this seriously work for the general consumer? even if i've searched for chevy before, why would i suddenly exit my ice cream experience?
if ads were contextually better, less distracting and less bandwidth/perf impactful, i may actually be convinced to view them. unfortunately none of these things are true.
You missed this part:
> if it weren't for CDNs, [...]
This blows my mind. The ad industry has basically taken three steps backwards in a time with incredible analytics. Google, Facebook etc have drunkenly ruined and inundated their targets to the point people outright mentally adblock
Hell most ads barely bother to state a purpose. they rely on the "shiny" factor
You can kind of suss this out of their 10k by looking at their cost of sales which is much stronger than companies like Twitter who rely more heavily on brand ad sales (direct response ads generally have lower sales overhead than brand ads since they are more commonly bought on a self-serve basis, even by advertisers with very high budgets)
One reason your ads may be bad on FB is if you use an ad blocker. FB uses a lot of signal from third party websites for targeting and if your ad blocker is blocking the FB pixel from loading you are blocking some of the most common data (conversion tracking data, product interest data) used to target high-value ads.
The point of that particular ad is likely less to get you to click and more to remind you that Chevy exists and is important. So when you go buy that new or used car, Chevy goes through your mind at least once, and you subconsciously have some trust in the brand because you are reminded of its existence through various outlets on a daily basis, which is naturally comforting when done correctly.
It’s not really any different from seeing a Tide laundry detergeny commercial while watching South Park. What’s tide got to do with a cartoon, and are you going to run out immediately and buy some Tide during the break? No, but next time you go to the store to buy detergent you’ll see Tide and while you might not buy it you’ll at least be familiar with it in a relatively positive manner, which for most will make the chances of them buying it higher.
Not everyone is going to buy Chevy but almost everyone is going to research Chevy. The role of Chevy ads being shown to everyone plays a role in this. So a Chevy ad still is “relevant” even on an ice cream site.
no thanks.
That's how tracking ads (don't) work. You usually get ads for things you just brought (or decided not to), hoping that you didn't actually buy it yet or will buy more than once, and the medium can intermediate the transaction.
Time for a re-decision. Expect to see those ads for years to come. How does a 2019 cherry-red Corvette sound?
This morning I decided to count the ads on a news article, there were 14 between sponsored bs and banner ads. Every single one was complete garbage.
Click here to find out how the tech and ad industry are lowering the bar at a "shocking" rate
However, I don't quite get the point for disruption. That is, it seems necessary to load pages at least twice, and then do some computation. How does that help users who are concerned about privacy, throughput or CPU load?
Without adblock, the majority of web users would be FURIOUS with websites and they'd demand legislative action. Advertisers should shut up and pray they don't poke the hornets nest.
You don't agree to a TOS by watching TV and listening to the radio, the internet is fundamentally different from those media.
Consenting to requests from google.com does not guarantee or imply consent from adservices.google.com, so if google.com tells my browser to please fetch resources from adservices.google.com I'll tell them to go away.
Personally, I use a giant blocklist [0] of domains I do not wish to request resources from.
As a comparison, if you invite a friend to your house do you expect them to show up with 50 other people? Would you be upset with your friend for assuming it would be okay to invite other people to your house without your consent? Is it morally wrong to tell your friend they may not bring other friends to your house without your approval? If you agreed to letting them bring friends over, are you okay with any friends or is their neo-nazi friend not allowed?
[0] http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
>You don't agree to a TOS by watching TV and listening to the radio, the internet is fundamentally different from those media.
You don't agree to a TOS by visiting a website either. Agreement is usually done when registering an account and even those are limited in any legal ability to enforce it.
To use your analogy though in the context of this paper... It would be more like if your friend only wanted to hang out at your house if everyone could join, and you told your friend everyone was allowed to come in, but then you secretly kicked out one person and managed to trick your friend into thinking the person you kicked out was still there because you knew everyone would leave if they found out. Sounds pretty selfish to me.
But if you say no, your friend has the choice of whether to come alone.
Anti-anti-adblocking systems prevent your friend from making that choice.
The anti-adblocking systems are the equivalent of coming over anyway but complaining about not being able to bring 50 friends the entire time. Anti-anti-adblocking systems are telling them to shut up or don't come over.
There's something to be said about people who repeatedly invite the friend over who constantly complains about not being able to bring 50 friends. I tend to respect sites who ask me to disable my ad blocker: I just won't visit their website.
A low traffic site doesn't make enough to sustain from ads. The proper response isn't to push traffic away - it's to find a business model that works. Ad based models are increasingly not working.
Do you go into stores and demand they take down the displays that you don't like while you're shopping?
No, but stores are usually happy for me to not look at the displays if I don't want to. Staff don't follow me around putting up displays in front of the shelves I'm looking at, sneaking things I don't want into my basket, or following me after I leave the store to keep showing me displays. Nor do they outsource these things to unvetted lowest bidders, and swear off responsibility when the people they've contracted steal my car whilst I'm in the shop.
* Avoiding the privacy implications of ads without restricting access to content
* Avoiding browser fingerprinting through checking which ad-blocking lists are enabled
* (More arguable) Enforcing 'Acceptable ads' policies
* (More arguable) Enabling ad replacement programs such as Brave.
Guaranteed that something like this would also block ads that are "site served" (e.g. Facebook's ads) though. Pretty difficult to make a privacy argument there since you're tracked exactly the same way there by nature of using the site.
But then, for site served scripts, the provider could sufficiently "tangle" it with the rest of the scripts as to be inseparable, so it's a lost war in the end and your point still stands, I believe.
I can't comment on.morality because it is inherently subjective but there is no legal problem here.